Oh Henry

We are very lucky at our house- about once a week this really cool show comes to our backyard! It keeps Henry entertained- and still!! - for about an hour at a time. All he has to do it sit by a window and wait for Daddy to drive by on the riding lawn mower. Talk about excitement! Sometimes he does have to move to a new window to see better...

"Where is Daddy?"

"Mommy , where IS Daddy?"

"Are you sure he's coming? Soon?"

"I guess I'll wait a little longer..."

"There he is!! Hi Daddy! Bye Daddy"

Henry actually says "Where is Daddy?", "Hi Daddy" and "Bye Daddy." The rest I added for him :) I'm sure he won't mind. I just love that little boy of mine...

The serious, furious dragon

I just wanted to share the start of a story that Marianna began last night. Her plan is that it will be 10 pages, with illustrations done by Sam. She asked me how to spell "serious," otherwise it was done on her own.

A transcript, in case it is hard to see:

Once upon a time a long
time ago, there was a dragon
who was very bad and
serious and fuarious (furious) who lived
in a cave. It was very dark and
was a good home to the
dragon. He was very neat and
clean, and had a good life
in his cave home.

Week 6 Complete!

Well, we have successfully completed our sixth week of school and we are still on track! It has been a good week here. We made home-made compasses, tracked caterpillar growth, drew pictures of spiders and ants, made maps of rooms, weighed mystery objects on the kitchen scale, memorized doubles math facts and another poem, successfully wrote "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and much more. Anna also finished "The Ordinary Princess," and is working on finished "Little House on the Prairie" and "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe." I am reading "The Silver Chair" to the kids at naptime, and the other day Anna did not want to have to wait for the next day and stayed up late reading ahead (I did not realize this until the next morning when I went to wake her up at 7 and found her reading yet again- I assume she slept part of the night at least).

Anna had the second week of her arts classes and was pretty excited to make two new friends there. The boys kept me very busy while she was in class- things are much simpler when we are at home... The church where the classes meet is really nice and has a nice big nursery, but for some reason, Henry especially is not interested in staying in one room but feels he must escape periodically. It's tough to have a conversation with someone when I constantly have to sprint down the hallway after him. I guess I'm getting my daily exercise in at least...

Sam is making great progress in his "studies" as well. He loves to write "A" and is working on the other two letters in his name. He does really well sometimes, but it's a process. He wants to learn to read, so we are doing some letter work together. He looks for letters he knows everywhere- it's fun to see him so excited. He is doing really well in his Sunday school class- his teacher told me that he helped her teach "Jesus Loves Me" to the class (this is one of his current favorite songs, so it means he sings it over and over and over and over again- hopefully his teacher was able to convince him to stop singing it at the end of the lesson). His other favorite song is "ABC," but I am having a really tough time convincing him that the letter "N" belongs in there... Sam is loving drawing and painting lately- he only wants to draw knights, unicorns and swords. A Mom at the Co-op really thinks Sam is hilarious and even brought him a gift of a knight/castle coloring book last week. That has been keeping him occupied! Sam gets frustrated when he can't draw something the way he wants- Anna keeps reminding him that she drew just like him when she was his age :)

Henry is talking up a storm these days. He is quite the mimic and will try to say anything you ask him to. He also has long conversations that are complete nonsense, but we all pretend we understand what he is saying. He sings also- in the car the other day he "sang" the entire way home. He is also getting very interested in using the potty- although he calls is the "pot," which for some reason I think is really cute. He has pooped on the pot twice now- after the first time, we were all cheering for him and Sam came over with his sword, tapped him on the shoulders and said, "I dub thee knight!" How's that for motivation!

Anna had her first dance class this past week- we are at the different place that only does dance, and not gymnastics also. This will be her first "real" ballet class where she will learn actual dances rather than playing dancing games. Also, there is a nice big window so parents can actually watch the class! Geoff and I were so impressed by how good she looked doing her bar exercises- she was so graceful. A group at our church is starting a Daisy Girl Scout troop, so next week we will have the first meeting. We are so lucky to have a great group of little girls all the same age in Anna's Sunday school class, and it will be fun to see them again for Girl Scouts. So, with her arts classes, Sunday school, dance class and Girl Scouts it is shaping up to be a busy year! I am thinking about putting Sam in a karate class starting next month- that seems like it will be right up his alley! I am also participating in a Mom's group that meets two Monday mornings each month. We had our first meeting this past week and I think it is going to be a great year with a bunch of really nice Moms.

We are enjoying the cool fall air here (finally!!). I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Labor Day Weekend

Last weekend we were in Wisconsin visiting my parents and Jeff. It was such a wonderful weekend- even with the 8.5hr drive to and from their place! We got a very late start on Friday night and didn't get in until about 2:30am. The kids did great in the car- they spend most of the evening completely mesmerized by a performance of Mozart's opera "The Magic Flute." I still can't believe they enjoy watching this- did I mention that it is in german? Anna can read the subtitles, but even Sam can follow the story. Henry sings along with the Queen of the Night- it's pretty funny. After the show, they all went to sleep without too much difficulty. All the kids woke up when we got there and thought it was morning. Technically it was morning I guess, but we did eventually get back to sleep :) It really doesn't help that Grammy and Grampy have a really fun house with so much to do...

We spent the weekend shooting bow and arrows (and addressing Sam as "Robin Hood" of course), jumping on the trampoline, playing outside, going in the river and out in the canoe (only on Saturday when it was semi-warm), and even got a boat ride in on Sunday morning in the fall chill. We had the best dinner on Saturday night- my Mom is the best cook ever. I loved seeing trees and having shade- not to mention being able to breath again! It has been a long summer here in Missouri! It was great catching up with Jeff and watching him play with the kids- they are so lucky to have such a great uncle. We got together with a bunch of the Ockulys on Sunday afternoon and even got to meet Annie's adorable boy, Joe. Overall it was a perfect weekend. Sam was in tears over leaving, but I think he's happy to be back home again.

We had a busy week once we got home- Anna started her arts classes on Tuesday. She has an art class, and drama class and a music class. She loved them all- in art she made a beaded alligator that is really cool, then did all kinds of activities in her drama class that she loved, and listened to part of "Peter and the Wolf" in her music class. She was pretty freaked out about the wolf, so the other day we spend an afternoon on "Peter and the Wolf" to introduce it to her better. We listened to a few different recordings, watched a few different videos of it and a few ballet versions of it. So now all the kids are obessed with it- she drew a pretty neat picture from the story and Sam has been acting out being Peter and catching the wolf non-stop.

We are still on schedule for where I planned to be in school. Anna is really writing a lot now- she does all the writing work for her classes and is writing quite a bit on her own as well. She still grumbles about doing her copywork, but she does it quite well. She also has a few different journals and a little diary that she loves to write in on her own. Yesterday she wrote an entire notebook page about apples. It is fun to see how she spells some words- "beyoutiful" is one of my favorites :) I decided to add in a few more subjects - we are reading "Life of Fred- Dogs" together. This is a story book that reinforces early math concepts. It's really cute- it centers around a day in the life of Fred, a five year old math professor. So far it has been a lot of fun and Anna seems to like it a lot. We are also going to start Shurley English Level 1 next week. By the end of this course Anna will understand what makes a sentence complete and also how to classify all the parts of a complete sentence. We will continue with the other grammar program (First Language Lessons 1) for the memorization and narration activities, but I think Shurley will be more effective, and she can certainly handle it.

Over the past month, she has finished a number of books on her own and can tell me all about them. She recently finished "Beezus and Ramona" and "Ramona the Pest." She has about 2 chapters left in "The Little House on the Prairie" and is enjoying that book for her quiet time reading. Her reading is amazing and I love to see her picking up books all the time. She has this amazing ability to tone out what is going on around her- she will be sitting on the couch reading intently while the boys are running around like maniacs throwing things and screeching. It's pretty funny.

Some people have asked me what I do with the boys while Anna is "in school." It really hasn't been too much of an issue- they either hang out with us at the table doing their own stuff (coloring, play dough, stickers, etc), or they play on their own in the living room or playroom. They do come interrupt us occasionally, but little breaks aren't a bad thing at this point. Anna is definitely ready for first grade work, but she is still only 5 and needs to get her wiggles out occasionally. Our school at this point doesn't take a really long time- we usually spend about 2-2.5 hours in the morning doing the bulk of school subjects (and not all of these involve sitting at the table) then spend time in the afternoon doing projects and more active things that the boys are involved in as well (science experiments, art projects, geography projects, etc). We have always done this kind of stuff, so it hasn't been much of an adjustment to be in school mode. The kids are used to doing lots of reading and art work and are all pretty good at being independent.

So, at this point, I have to say that I love homeschooling! It has been great so far and I love seeing how much Anna is learning. She amazes me every day with how quickly she catches on and how much fun she has learning. Her arts classes are going to be great for her as well- she will have a chance to make some new friends and learn in a classroom setting. Dance class starts next week- she will have a recital on December 10th if anyone would like to see it!